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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28228431">Coda</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellarunciter/pseuds/ellarunciter'>ellarunciter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Afterlife, Angst and Feels, Cannibalism, Grief/Mourning, and a bit of Fitzier for good measure</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:02:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,641</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28228431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellarunciter/pseuds/ellarunciter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A ghost story of sorts, set during and after Episode 10</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Captain Francis Crozier &amp; Commander James Fitzjames, Harry D. S. Goodsir &amp; Lady Silence | Silna</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Coda</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is Harry Goodsir trying to make sense of the afterlife armed with his inquisitive mind and a limited knowledge of Christian and Inuit beliefs. It draws a bit of lore from the ending of the novel, with the story of Nuliajuk (Sedna) who is a deity in Inuit tradition. But the characters are 100% the ones from the show. Also, a lot of feels. </p><p>As usual: English is not my first language! Please feel free to correct grammar, or anything that sounds weird! Thanks so much</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Will I fly?</em>, the boy had asked. <em>Up to God?</em><br/>He can't remember the boy's name. And he does not know if God is in this place. He knows beauty, though, and sees beauty as he is going. White fractals and perfect crystals and pure geometric forms.</p><p>He dies.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <em>We are all eaters of souls.</em>
</p><p>He gets eaten.<br/>And the men, who ate him, get eaten in turn.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There's a beast and a man on the top of the hill, when the woman arrives. <br/>The beast is dead, and she kneels by its head, grabs the small flask of water she keeps under her furs. She pours some of it into the beast's mouth.<br/><em>Fresh water to help a soul go home.</em><br/>There's a multitude of souls inside the beast. </p><p>The man is alive.</p><p><br/>The woman cuts his hand off to free him from his chains, and carries him down the hill. <br/>Dresses his wounds with lichen and sews the stump of his wrist.<br/>The soul that was Harry Goodsir watches over her shoulder as she works.</p><p>Every other soul is gone.</p><p> </p><p><br/>She then walks to the thing that used to be his body. Lying face down on a wooden table, pieces cut from it, and consumed.<br/>She goes to grab the small flask of water she keeps under her furs. Face hidden in the shadows of her parka's hood.<br/>The wind picks up, all of a sudden, and she hesitates.</p><p><br/>She wipes the tears from her cheeks with naked fingers, and presses them to the body's lips instead.<br/>Salt water, not fresh.<br/>She'll drag the body East, later, and cover it with rocks.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Every night, the man they called the Captain lies awake reciting names.<br/>The soul that was Harry Goodsir recognises most of them. It's strange to hear his own name with the others. There's more than a hundred names, all of them gone.</p><p>Every night, the woman they called Silence goes outside and listens to the wind.<br/>And she sings.</p><p>The woman has no tongue, and so her song has no words.<br/>It's a humming that comes from the deeps of her throat and the root of her spine.<br/>The soul that lives in the wind listens, and he marvels realising he understands the whole song.<br/>He'd tried so hard, back then, to convert sounds and meanings, Inuktitut to English and the other way around. There is no language now, for neither have a tongue.</p><p>Somehow, it makes it easier.</p><p>She sings about the woman who lives at the bottom of the ocean, about how everything survives by eating souls.<br/>She sings, <em>The weather's turning</em>, and her father's name, and the way to the village by the coast.<br/>She sings while she hunts, and then her song is silent, but the soul in the wind can hear it still.<br/>She sings how to carve a harpoon, how to gut a seal, the names of the stars above them. Songs about her world, from the smallest things to the great ones, the kind you'd sing to a beloved child before bed.</p><p>The soul that was Harry Goodsir listens to her singing every night. It's only after a few weeks, when the nights stretch much, much longer than the days, that it occurs to him that she might be singing for him.</p><p><br/>It takes a few more nights for him to try and sing, too.<br/>He doesn't have a voice now, just as he doesn't have a body, but at the same time he does. He is himself everywhere, in the rocky ground and the wind and the flame in the woman's qulliq (that word he remembers from before, a qulliq, an oil lamp carved in stone). He is himself everything, or inbetween everything, and so he hums a breeze to caress the woman's hair and make the flame dance.<br/>She smiles then, and it's a full smile, like he'd never seen her wear before. She sings again, a greeting that's a sunrise wrapped in soft caribou skin. </p><p>He wants to ask, so badly, and can only hope that she can answer. So he sings his question with another gust of wind.</p><p>
  <em>What am I?</em>
</p><p>She remains silent, takes a deep breath, looks up at the night sky.</p><p>He knows the answer won't be easy. He had words in English, he used to know, <em>ghost</em>, and <em>spirit</em>, and <em>soul</em>. She might give him anirniq, inua, tuurngaq even, if she had a tongue and he had ears, but even without words, as they both exist now, it might not be that easy.</p><p>She clears her throat and strikes a low note, almost a moan:</p><p>
  <em>I don't know.</em>
</p><p>He'd hoped for an answer because he knows she's Angakkuq, as was her father. She's sung to him for weeks now, her knowledge of her world, and the world inbetween (and over, and underneath) her world, where he exists. But apparently he doesn't fit into any of her songs, any of her stories.</p><p><em>Does it bother you?</em>, he asks.</p><p>She smiles again and starts a low, bright humming.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I don't know what you are. But I know you.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>They sing together from that night on. He is still mastering this new voice of his, but she keeps listening. </p><p>The man they called the Captain doesn't hear.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>One morning, the woman loads her sledge and starts to walk.<br/>The man they called the Captain follows her.<br/>The soul that was Harry Goodsir does not exactly <em>follow</em> them, because he is everything and everywhere, all the way to the ice up North and down to the village by the sea. But he goes with them as they trek to the shore.<br/>They encounter more bodies, frozen things in frozen tents. The woman stays away from them. The man approaches some, brushes the hair behind a dead ear, looks at them for a long time, and doesn't cry. </p><p> </p><p><br/>There's a living man in the last camp they encounter, and his face is full of gold.</p><p><em>Close</em>, says the man, and dies.</p><p>There's a brief glimmer in the air, that neither the man nor the woman perceive, and then nothing.<br/>The soul that was Harry Goodsir wonders how it all works. How some souls need to be coerced to leave, with fresh water or prayers, and others seem to sparkle for a moment and just go.<br/>The dead man's name was Edward, he remembers. Did he fly? Up to God?</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Every night, the man with only one hand recites his list of names.<br/>And every night, the woman sings softly for the wind.</p><p><em>I'm lonely</em>, the wind answers. <em>Why am I here?</em></p><p>She stares at the flames of their bonfire. They've been burning the wood they find around the kabloona camps. </p><p>
  <em>There's another one like you. Inside of him.</em>
</p><p>She looks at the man they called Captain, who has finished whispering his names and is sleeping by the fire.</p><p><em>I don't know how to get it out</em>, she laments. Her pitch goes higher and the man stirs in his sleep.</p><p>The soul in the crisp night air considers this for a long moment. Only then he notices that there's one name missing from the man's nightly roster. </p><p><em>Perhaps you shouldn't</em>, dance the flames.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The man with only one hand has got two souls inside him. <br/>His own anirniq is strong as ever, more than ever, free from the poison that used to hold him back, the one that almost killed him.<br/>The other's something else, entangled in the tendons of his heart, huddled in the nooks of the cathedral inside his skull.<br/>The soul that used to be a surgeon finds it there after much prodding, having been breathed in and out of the man's lungs countless times.  </p><p>He dares to call its name, not Captain or Commander, as he would have before. <em>James</em>, he calls, and he feels this other soul stir in response.</p><p> </p><p>The soul that was James Fitzjames weaves a dream where he can join him. <br/>(The man that was Francis Crozier will not remember it in the morning. He'll wake up with a headache and an abstract sense of hope.)</p><p>The dream looks and smells like the Great Cabin on Terror, and Harry wonders if Fitzjames has made it from Crozier's memory or his own. The Commander (no, <em>the Captain</em>) is in full uniform, standing by the desk. He does not offer him a seat. Why would he? </p><p>
  <em>I didn't know you were still around, Sir. Didn't see you, in here. It was her who told me.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>There's only been one <em>her</em> around them for years, so Fitzjames doesn't need to ask who she is.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I felt you out there, Harry. Only I didn't know it was you. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Does he know I'm still here?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Francis? No, I don't think he does.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It's easy to slip back into English, and back into their old names. Harry wants to ask, <em>does Francis know that you are still here</em>, but he does not dare. Instead, he blurts out: <em>What happened?</em></p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I died, but then I didn't. And you?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The same.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>They both pause, as if realising that was pretty clear to begin with. It's Harry who speaks again:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Do you know why? We're the only ones left. The only ones, but them.</em>
</p><p>(He means the sleeping man and the woman, the Captain and the Angakkuk)</p><p> </p><p>Fitzjames shrugs. He does not know, and does not seem to care. But Harry has decided he needs answers.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>May I ask you, Sir? How did you die?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>James smiles. <em>No need for formalities now, Doctor. It was poison.</em> He produces a small, green bottle, and sets it on the table. Harry recognizes it as belonging to his own medical kit. </p><p> </p><p><em>Me too</em>, he admits.</p><p> </p><p>Perhaps there's something there. He's seen the woman pour fresh water from a small flask into each of her catches' mouths, she's sung to him why she does it. Maybe a different liquid from a different bottle, administered to cause death and not after it, could cause a soul to... linger, up here. Or maybe it's something else. He hates to ask, but he does:</p><p>
  <em>Who did it?</em>
</p><p>Fitzjames looks contrite as he whispers: <em>Francis. I asked him. I couldn't do it myself. Too sick with scurvy.</em></p><p> </p><p><em>I did it myself</em>, Harry offers, as if confessing such a sin could lessen the other man's remorse. He is now certain that they are standing in Crozier's memories, that the green bottle standing on the table haunts the man's dreams more often than not.</p><p><em>Then there's your answer, Doctor. We died by our own wish. I believe the papists have a place for sinners like us. Purgatory. Such a terrible sin... We are to stay behind till it's atoned for.</em> But James is braving a smile, almost as if speaking in jest, back to the haughty Commander he was in 1845, all tall tales and bright demeanor. </p><p>Harry Goodsir does not believe this. <em>What kind of atonement would that be? You're happier here than you'd ever be in Heaven</em>, he thinks. He doesn't know if <em>thinking</em> and <em>saying</em> are the same thing here, if Fitzjames can see through him just as he sees through his arrogant facade. But if he's heard, and he's offended, he shows no sign of it. Instead, he inquires:</p><p>
  <em>How did you die, Harry?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Poison, too. And I cut my veins open.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Were you sick?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I was angry. Hickey and his men, they did, they did terrible things. I wanted to hurt them. So if you want to know the t</em>
  <em>ruth, that's how I died. I died in anger.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Fitzjames seems to ponder this, and finally declares:</p><p>
  <em>Our deaths were very different, then. I asked for it, but I would have liked to live. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I'm sure you suffered terrible pain, Sir, if it was scurvy.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Yes, Doctor. I died in a great deal of pain. But I also died in love.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Harry does not have an answer to that. He looks trough the window in this dreamed Great Cabin. He sees the embers of their dying fire, a slight tint of pink near the horizon. </p><p><em>He'll wake up soon</em>, Fitzjames announces.</p><p>
  <em>Then I shall take my leave. </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The man with one hand gasps for air as he wakes. The woman is already up, and hands him breakfast: the last of their seal.<br/>They walk in silence the whole day. They encounter no more tents, no more dead men. No more food, either.<br/>The woman tries to convey that their journey is ending soon, makes do with hand signs. <em>We'll arrive at the village tomorrow. Make camp here.</em> She's not sure if the man understands, but he helps her start the fire anyway.</p><p> </p><p>The wind stays quiet. Much to think about.</p><p> </p><p>That night, she doesn't wait for the man with one hand to fall asleep. She chants her question loud for the soul in the  wind to hear. The man with only one hand listens too, although he doesn't understand.</p><p>
  <em>Did you find it?</em>
</p><p> </p><p><em>It is him. The tall dark one</em>, answers the wind. <em>He is meant to be where he is. While this one lives, if your people will have them.</em></p><p> </p><p><em>The people will be pleased,</em> she sings. <em>But they are not my people. I won't stay.</em></p><p> </p><p>The soul that was Harry Goodsir makes a log crack in the fire. The man who sits by it, listening to the woman's song, seems startled. His eyes are fixed on her as if he saw her for the first time.</p><p><em>I lost my tuurngaq,</em> she whines, <em>I am no Angakkuk. I cannot stay. </em></p><p> </p><p>They'd called it <em>Tuunbaq</em>, a creature, a beast. A spirit that walks as an animal. He knows better now, from her songs. The woman at the bottom of the ocean had harnessed a soul to fight for her. A soul that had crystallized into a living thing, like the moisture from your breath would condense on the walls of an igloo and then freeze. He wondered, if he stayed in this place long enough, if he would crystallize too, into a body that walked and breathed and ate souls again, like every living thing. </p><p><em>Did you do this?,</em> he asks her. <em>Did you keep me here? A tuurngaq for yourself?</em></p><p> </p><p><em>No!</em> She's trembling now, her voice splintered. <em>You are no tuurngaq. I don't know what you are. But I know you.</em></p><p> </p><p>The air grows colder, and goes completely still. The man they called the Captain looks around them, and then back at the woman. She's heaving, not singing anymore.</p><p> </p><p><em>And I missed you</em>, she sobs without words. <em>I just missed you.</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The man they called Francis Crozier learns the woman's name the following day. <br/>The woman they called Lady Silence is called Silna.<br/>He'd never call her Silence again. Not after hearing her sing.</p><p> </p><p>She walks out of the village before sunrise. The man they call Aglooka will look for her, later. He will ask the hunters and the children, in his broken Inuktitut.</p><p>They will only tell her that she's gone.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She walks North-northwest for a few days, but doesn't stray far from the coast.</p><p>She builds an igloo, strong, thick walls to last till the spring.</p><p>At night, she sings.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>There's two sailors down in Usqsuqtuuq,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>one is dead and one is missing a hand.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They came over in the bellies of their great wooden boats,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>now one lives inside the other and their boats are long gone.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The boats will make good gifts for Nuliajuk under the sea.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She is pleased with them and so lets the seals come play.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>All of the other sailors and warriors are gone</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But their healer lives here with me.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She sings loud and clear and the wind sings with her.</p><p> </p><p>Come spring, when the ice starts to melt, they will travel up North.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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